


The Stars Will Be There Tomorrow (There’s always another chance to shine next to them)

by NordicTwin



Category: Oban Star-Racers
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coping, Don is a Wreck, Eva gets the support she deserves, Eva gets three older brothers, Family, Female Friendship, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Headcanon: Eva is a bored genius, Headcanon: Eva is lactose intolerant, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Male-Female Friendship, Mentions of Emotional Neglect, Minor Original Character(s), Tales from beyond Happily Ever After, Therapy, loosely chronological, mentions of physical neglect
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-04-12 09:56:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19129693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NordicTwin/pseuds/NordicTwin
Summary: All she wanted was for them to be a family again. That was her wish.But wishes are fickle things, and Eva never gets her mother back.She gets something better.A series of inter-connected one-shots that explore the lives of the Earth Team before and after Oban.





	1. Goodbye Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome!
> 
> Oban Star Racers is by far my favorite show of all time - I love the universe, I love the music, I love the characters. But there's so much potential still left in them after the ending, and after reading Zhampy's "Ordinary Days", I finally pulled myself together and started writing.
> 
> I hope you'll enjoy my ventures into the minds and lives of Eva, Don, and all the others!

The return to Earth is… weird.

And tense.

It’s just the four of them left - her, her dad, and Stan and Koji. And while the initial reunion before leaving had been joyous, now, in the artificial twilight of the stone pod with only their own emergency lights and the glowing lines to see by, a makeshift camp set up around the Arrow… things are different.

There had been not quite demands for an explanation, more like pointedly worded requests from Stan, while Koji had been a bit more polite in how he went about it.

Regardless, they deserved to know the truth, and they’ve got more than enough time for her to come clean. About everything.

Her real name, her and Don’s shared connection, the Crash, the School, how she escaped and ended up as their stowaway.

 _Everything_.

It’s quiet, once she’s done. Stan’s body is still, tense, like he’s holding himself back. She can’t see much in the dim light, but there’s just enough for her to notice his clenched fists and gritted teeth, a low sound like a growl escaping him with each breath.

Koji, in contrast, looks deceptively calm. Then again, Eva doesn’t think she’s ever seen him display any kind of rage. Fear and concern, yes. Anger, only if his and Stan’s work has been insulted. But not rage, not like what Stan is displaying.

“You’re tellin’ me…” Stan finally spits out “that you lost your mom, witnessed her die, and then _he_ -” he turns his eyes to her father, fury burning brightly “just _left you_ \- a fucking _5 year old kid_ \- in the care of some _school_? Is that what I’m hearing, or am I just hallucinating this shit?”

She doesn’t say anything. Can’t quite get the words to come.

That… that was just what she told him, wasn’t it?

 _God_ … she’s been angry and hurt and terrified, but… for some reason, hearing someone else say it…

_It sounds a lot worse than what she remembers it as._

Her expression must’ve spoken for her, because in a flash Stan is on his feet. _“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”_ He growls, moving forward a step.

Then Koji is also on his feet (they all are, suddenly, though she doesn’t recall moving), a hand on his friend’s arm. “Easy, Stan…” he says, voice low. A warning or to calm him, she doesn’t know.

In either case, Stan doesn’t listen.

“No! No, I’m not going to let this slide!” He steps around Koji’s arm, though he doesn’t advance further, instead pointing towards Don. “I’ve said it time and time again - this man is _completely heartless_ . I know Koji’s defended you, but no fucking more! A little kid! You left a little kid, _your own fucking daughter_ , to waste away in some cold, shitty school, while you went around and felt sorry for yourself. And then you have the audacity to forget all about her, after making your way back to the top, not even trying to contact her? Oh no, _sir_ , that’s now how things fucking work”.

She can see her father hesitate, out of the corner of her eye. Like he wants to defend himself or justify his actions, like he tried when he confronted her just a few days before. But with how angry Stan is, she gets the feeling it’d only make things worse.

She thinks he can feel it, too, hence the hesitation.

“I… have no delusions that what I did was right. Not anymore-“

“ _Anymore’_?!”

“Stan, calm down!”

“No, I _won’t_ calm down!”

The shout echoes throughout the room. Her heart beats faster, her body frozen as she watches the confrontation unfold.

“ _Not anymore_ , he says!” Stan hisses. “How the _fuck_ could you _ever_ justify _abandoning a little kid_ ?! What the hell is _wrong_ with you, human?! I oughta-“

“You will not do anything!” Koji finally speaks up, and there’s the anger she’s only seen in passing, but It’s different. Sharper.

There’s no insult made to his work, no sabotage or meddling. Just a conflict that he’s handling with almost practiced ease.

Stan turns on him. “You’re honestly not going to defend him for this, are you?! You _know_ this is inexcusable!”

“Of course I’m not going to defend him!” Koji’s voice is sharp, slicing through the tension like a white-hot plasma cutter. “But there’s a time and a place for everything, and _she_ -“ suddenly his arm sweeps out towards her “-has been through enough traumatizing events for a lifetime, and she is _only 15_. _Do not_ add watching her father - previously estranged or not - getting assaulted by a man strong enough to kill him to it”.

She feels like she should protest. She doesn’t need to be babied, she’s done fine handling things on her own until now, Koji has no right to speak for her.

_But…_

Her body is shaking, and her mouth is dry. She cold and _everything_ aches all the way to her bones. She just lost her partner, one of her best friends (one of her _only_ friends), as infuriating as he could be, someone who saw _her_ and not just unruly, disobedient little Eva, the _abandoned_ , the _orphan_. Someone who’d rather give up his own freedom than see her used by a creature so evil, he would have destroyed everything in minutes, just to further his own ideals of justice.

She’s tired.

_So very tired…_

She looks at them all. Her father looks sad, Koji is unreadable, and Stan… Stan still looks furious, is still tense and rearing for a fight.

He glances at her.

Then he spits on the ground and pushes Koji away. “Don’t think I’m going to let him get away with it”.

“I never doubted it,” Koji just sighs, watching his friend storm away, into a dark corner.

It gets quiet again after that. The light dims and Eva eventually tries to go to bed, setting up a cot by the remains of the Arrow, but sleep evades her, a million thoughts rushing through her mind as she drifts between nightmares and memories.

Suddenly there’s sound. A steady stream of tikka-tak-click in the almost darkness.

She opens her eyes and rolls around. Not too far from her, leaning up against a crate, sits Koji, illuminated by the cool, blue light of his holo-screen, lines flowing across it as he types on an old fashioned keyboard.

For awhile, she just watches him. Then, without really knowing why, she whispers: “What are you doing?”

Koji startles for a moment, looking up at her. A moment passes, then he smiles at her. “It’s a little late for you to be awake, isn’t it?”

She shrugs under her blanket. “Can’t sleep”.

“Neither could I,” he whispers back. Then, suddenly, he pats the ground next to him in invitation. “Want to learn how to code?”

Eva’s always been more of a practical engineering girl. Hand her a toolset and a fresh batch of metal and screws, she’s going to make something functional. She’d tried learning coding while at Sterns, but their books had been horribly outdated (as had anything in that place been, really) and so she had turned towards what she could _actually_ learn on her own, something she could tune and adjust based on her own ideas and a little bit of theoretical learning.

But to have the opportunity to learn a new skill from someone who’s actually qualified to working with it, well… that’s just too good of an option to pass.

And even if she _hadn’t_ been curious as all hell about learning something possibly useful for her future projects, well… she’s not blind to how Koji’s probably also just offering her an easy distraction, something to take her mind off of things.

In either case, she appreciates the offer, and so she gathers her blanket around her and shuffles over, plopping down by his right shoulder.

Koji doesn’t actually start teaching her anything, once she’s sat down. He just sits there, typing line after line, humming under his breath.

She doesn’t really mind - just watching him work is actually pretty interesting to her. The way his hands fly across the keyboard, how all those lines of text are eventually going to _create_ something when applied with the right tech…

Call her weird, but there’s something beautiful about it.

They sit like that for awhile. And then, suddenly…

“You know Stan’s not angry at you, right?”

She looks up at the whisper. Koji has turned his head slightly to look at her. His smile is gentle and warm, in a way she has never seen before.

There’s so much _care_ in it, she’s doesn’t know how to react, and suddenly she wonders why she didn’t spend more time with him and Stan during their adventures, because there lies so much in that little smile and those whispered words that she’s never realized before.

(Wonders how he could know what’s been going around in her head since that confrontation).

She hugs her knees close. Koji turns back to the screen, but he keeps whispering.

“I know it may be difficult to understand now, but I promise you he’s not. Neither am I, for the record - you’re entitled to your secrets, Molly, no matter how serious they may be”.

“Not telling you who I really am goes a little beyond that, don’t you think?” She mumbles, staring blankly ahead at nothing in particular.

There’s a sigh next to her. “Molly, tell me something. Did you feel safe in any way, when you first met us? When you tracked down your father?”

She blinks, mulls it over. _Did she feel safe…?_

It’s going to be a cold day in hell before Eva ever admits anything about how she felt during those initial days - she doesn’t think her heart can take it. But in this dim darkness, where it just her, Koji, and a faintly glowing screen, who knows how far into space, things are different.

It’s only because of these circumstances that she will allow herself to shake her head “no” at the question. No - she hadn’t felt safe, it would’ve been pure madness if she’d just blurted out everything then and there. The same had been the case when she’d met her father again and he hadn’t recognized her.

Even then, what if he had? They hadn’t seen each other in 10 years by then, and she was pretty sure someone at Sterns had informed the police of her escape. Now if that was public knowledge or not, she wasn’t sure - horrible or not, it wouldn’t have looked pretty on the school’s reputation if word got out that a student had gone missing while in their care.

Her plan had been foolish, that much is fact. But she had just been so desperate, had just wanted to _get out, to be free-_!

“Hey”.

Koji’s arm falls around her shoulders and pulls her into his side, a cool hand carefully rubbing up and down her upper arm in comfort. She realizes that she’s crying.

“It’s okay, just take it easy, you’re safe now. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that”.

She shakes her head again. “Not your fault”.

“Hmm…”

They sit like that for a bit, until her breathing evens out and her body feels both lighter and heavier.

“Stan was neglected too, you know”.

Eva looks up at him in shock, trying to wrap her head around that. Koji just nods to himself.

“That’s why he got so angry at Don. Hearing the truth, I mean, we always suspected something was up with you, but for Don to be involved like that…” the hand on her arm pulls her closer, and he takes a deep breath, as if to steady himself “it brought up some bad memories for him”.

A part of her wants to protest. A part of her _does_ protest.

“Dad didn’t _neglect_ me-”

“No, he just abandoned you”.

Koji’s looking at her, and for a moment she hates how calm he is. Hates how he’s _right_.

She’d said it herself. _She had no one_ , an orphan to all but herself and the school administration. And she’s so mad at her father, but she’s also not, and her heart and her head hurts with so many conflicting emotions all at once.

Koji’s hand moves to her head and pulls her down to lean against his shoulder, gently petting her hair as she shakes.

“It’s gonna be okay, Eva, it’s gonna be okay. You’ve been so brave, but you don’t have to be anymore.”

She clutches her blanket, knuckles going white from the pressure.

“You’ll never be alone again”.

Something in her breaks, and then she’s clinging to Koji like he’s a life-line and she’s drowning. His arms wrap around her and keeps her steady, whispering comfort until she feels calm again.

There are no more tears. Just a desperate need to be held, to be a child and know someone else can handle the world.

When she finally pulls away, Koji’s hand lingers on her head, ruffling it for a moment.

“Get some rest,” he tells her. “It’ll all be a little easier tomorrow, you’ll see”.

She nods, gathering her blanket back up in her arms. Koji offers her a hand for support as she staggers up, a yawn slipping past her lips in the process.

“Thanks, Koji,” she mumbles, rubbing at her eye. He just smiles at her.

“Anytime, Eva”.

She shuffles back to her cot, curling up so she’s still facing Koji, watching as he goes back to coding.

And then, between one moment and another, it’s suddenly much lighter in the big pod, and her dad is kneeling by her side, shaking her shoulder gently to wake her.

“Eva? You need to wake up, we’re almost to Earth’s atmosphere”.

She blinks up at him for a moment, bleary-eyed and body still heavy with sleep. In the near distance, she can see Stan and Koji speak quietly between themselves. Stan still looks tense, but there’s a hint of calmness to him.

Koji briefly catches her eye and smiles, and a spark of appreciation blooms in her stomach.

Yeah… she’ll be fine.

 _She knows it_.


	2. They Say Fatherhood Suits You (too bad you don’t suit fatherhood)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don Wei has always been a bad liar. But he's good at running.  
> Too bad the past has a tendency to catch up sooner or later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, thank you so much for all of the positive response to "The Stars Will Be There..."!!! I've never had this many comments on one chapter in all of the time I've been writing again, and you're all so sweet and precious??? I didn't expect much of a welcome to the OSR community, but wow!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, commenting, and the kudos - you're all great TTuTT  
> (And hilarious, I don't remember when I last had this much fun being part of a fandom community. Small fandoms ftw!)

_“You know, fatherhood really suits you”._

That was one of the most common things people said to him after the birth of his daughter, after seeing him hold her or interact with her in any way.

Funny… he’d actually believed them, back then, during those early days when he’d actually been a whole human. When words like “daughter” and “wife” and “family” and “happiness” all meant the same thing, and he had felt like the luckiest man on Earth, no, in the whole galaxy.

Now… now “fatherhood” is a hollow word, bringing him nothing but pain and sorrow and a bitter, freezing, all encompassing void of regret that he walks along each and every day, but so desperately tries to cover up.

 _It never works, it never works, but it has to, it has to, it can’t be allowed to exist, but it does and it keeps calling her name_.

~~_Eva, Eva, Eva, his little Champion, his Princess, his greatest pride and joy, born brimming with life and Maya’s mischief and love of flight._ ~~

~~_Whathashedone,whathashedone,godsabove,whathashedone??!!_ ~~

Even now, he still remembers the day she was born vividly, like he could close his eyes and open them again and he’d be back in time.

 

* * *

 

Maya, ever in need of moving around, even with just a week left before the arrival of their first child, insists on accepting the invitation to hand out medals at the minor league championships.

_Even when almost nine months pregnant and on maternity leave she has to have her hands in racing in some way - and as he has come to learn, there is no stopping Maya the Moonchaser when she puts her mind to something. While utterly exasperating at times, it is also incredibly endearing, and he loves that part of her just as fiercely as all the rest._

She is up by the podium, looking radiant, even in a big maternity dress and with her hair a two-toned mess because for as much as she loves the pink, she is absolutely terrified that the chemicals in the dye would hurt the baby, and so it is half pink and half her original, dusty blonde.

She is talking with the winner - a girl, so close to adulthood and yet so far - who is simultaneously laughing and crying and clinging to her flowers and trophy like only a first-time winner can do.

And then suddenly Maya stiffens in place and turns around, all but screaming “the baby, Don, the baby!”

Her water had broken then and there, and she is rushed to the hospital in one of the on-site ambulances while he’s following closely in their car, probably breaking all traffic laws known to man.

A few hours later, their child is born, healthy and screaming, with a head chock-full of black hair and tiny, red cheeks.

A daughter. A tiny little thing with Maya’s eyes and what his beloved wastes no time declaring is his face, no doubts about it, just look at that scowl.

She wastes even less time joking about how the precious little bundle just hadn’t been able to wait to get on the race-track, she just had to come out and join her mommy in congratulating the winner.

He laughs, then, but a budding apprehension is quickly taking root within him. A desire to keep their daughter safe from any possible threat.

_It’s the same desire that makes him pack up her little suitcase and drive her to Sterns just 5 years later, when everything has fallen apart._

They name her Eva. _Life_. Because she’s full of it, and they wouldn’t have her any other way.

 

* * *

 

He looks back on those days and wonders if he could have done anything differently, if he should’ve have tried harder to get Maya to slow down, to maybe try another path in life, to just… stay safe.

But no, it would never have worked. Maya would never have been happy with a quiet life. He’s always known that, but even so… he is- _was-_ her husband. All he’s ever wanted to do was to keep her happy and safe.

Her and… her and E… her and their daughter, both.

That rainy day… letting go of her little hand, seeing her run up to the car, crying out for him as he left her behind… he didn’t look back. Couldn’t look back. He would have turned the car around and stolen her away if he did.

_This didn’t stop him from parking the car on the side of the road and breaking down in tears of his own, once he was out of sight of that place._

It is the hardest thing he’s ever done, by far. Even harder than burying Maya. And it never gets easier, even years later.

(Of course…. his coping methods are probably not the best, as will the therapist tell him 10 years later.)

 

* * *

 

He locks up her room, locks up a lot of things. Moves all of his clothing out of the room he shared with Maya and locks that up, too, and moves into the guest bedroom.

It’s still too much. He drinks to forget, but the house itself reminds him too much of the family that he has destroyed.

He needs to get away.

Setting up things for the school is easy - he’s got enough money to stay on top of payments for years, and a little allowance for her to be put on a bank card. The fees for the school are cheap, anyways, that’s mainly why he chose it on top of the reputation they boast of, so she’s covered with everything, even without him earning a steady income.

He packs only the most essential things and leaves it all behind, locking up the house and hopping on the next bus out of town. Only one sentimental thing comes with him and that, too, is locked up in a metal box at the very bottom of his bag.

_(He doesn’t realize it until many years later, when all of his past mistakes suddenly confront him in the form of a red-eyed little spitfire of a teenager who reminds him too much of soft pinks and deep reds and a child crying in the rain, but a part of his heart gets shut away with every lock he puts on a reality that is too painful for him to deal with.)_

Years go by. He tries so desperately to forget, but everywhere he looks he sees reminders of his mistakes. Happy parents walking with their children in particular leaves a sour taste in his mouth. So he seeks to places further and further away from civilization, places long since destroyed by industrialization and pollution. Even then he can’t escape - the soft shades of the sunrise reminds him of how his wife’s hair used to shine in the morning light, and the sunset of how it glowed a deep peach in the evening. And in the glowing embers of fires he sees _their_ eyes, deep and red and burning.

He wonders what Maya would think if she saw him now. Wonders what the girl he wasn’t good enough for is doing. He lies to himself that it doesn’t matter - she’s safe and warm and cared for at the boarding school, where he cannot hurt her, she doesn’t need him.

(Back at Sterns, little Eva, just 8 years old, stands defiant against unfair rules and teachers who are bigger bullies than the high schoolers. She’s sent to detention for punching a kid who mocked her for being an orphan when she isn’t and the teachers know it and still don’t defend her, but her fire refuses to be snuffed out, and is only stoked a little more each time they try to push her down) _._

Then he comes upon Rick. Brash, hot-headed, and fiercely competitive Rick, who has so much potential in him that is being wasted on drag races in the desert, when he could be out there on a proper track in a star-racer _winning_.

The last time he met someone with so much potential, he had driven her to her death.

As he partners up with young Rick Thunderbolt, her vows he won’t make that same mistake again.

They start out small with the same vehicles he first saw Rick race in, quickly building up a reputation as a strong team. Under Don’s guidance, Rick excels, landing podium spot after podium spot, until the star-racing community finally gets their eyes on them.

That’s when Don starts pulling on old connections in the shadows, securing mechanics and technicians and a _star_ _racer_. They rent hangar and training spaces at first, until sponsorships and Rick’s winning earnings allows them to _buy_ and _build_ and _expand_.

Don hits the ground running, and the past gets a little easier to ignore each day. He’s doing right by Maya’s memory - no screw ups, this time. He won’t allow it.

 **_“No screw ups,”_ ** a cold voice continually whispers in the back of his mind **_“except the daughter you left behind so you wouldn’t have to deal with her reminding you of Maya all the time. Is that really all you’ve reduced her to?”_ **

~~_It’s for the best, it’s to protect her, he is no father, she deserves better, he doesn’t deserve her, but he misses her so much and he wants to go and get her back and beg for forgiveness, but he can’t, she is better off without him, what has he done what has he done._ ~~

**_“Coward.”_ **

They move back to the city he once fled from, and after four years away, he finally re-enters the house he left behind - alone, of course, he’s not ready to let anyone know of this, his darkest secret.

It’s not a pleasant experience.

Everything is dilapidated and overrun with weeds and moss, and the inside covered in dust and old cobwebs, and a hefty bug infestation. There are things in the cupboards that have probably developed their own societies by the time he finds them.

It’s as sad a mess as he left it in.

Even so… the memories are more present here than anywhere else. The smell of Maya’s perfume still lingers, and he almost expects a little girl in a pink dress come barrelling through the house, calling out to him and reaching out to be held, so secure in her knowledge that she could always find _comfort and safety-_

His knees collapse under him and he can’t breathe, looking towards that locked door right down the hallway where the nursery had been, where her room _is_.

Forever frozen in time. Cold and abandoned, with only memories to haunt it.

Just like the rest of the house.

He hires a discreet company to renovate and get the garden under control, and pays them a lot of money to keep quiet about everything they witness. Even the room he had shared with Maya gets done over.

_(He can’t bear to throw any of her things away, and instead lets the company box them up and put them in storage deep inside a closet that he locks, like everything else. His heart breaks all over again at doing it, but he tells himself it is for the best. It has to be)._

_(Only E- only the child’s bedroom is left untouched. Those are not his things to decide what to do with, he lost that right when he abandoned his role as her father.)_

Even with the house fixed up, he doesn’t stay there much. He tries to sleep in the old room, but rest evades him. The memories are still too strong and the house too empty.

He still can’t bear to sell it. Just in case… just in case someone might come by, searching for what once was. But that will never happen, he doesn’t _want_ it to happen. That would be the past crawling out of the hole he’s trying to keep it buried in, he can’t _let_ it happen.

He takes to keeping a few spare sets of clothes and a blanket and toiletries at his office in the new Wei Racing building. He supposes it goes well with his new workaholic persona, overnighting on the couch there.

Yet the past still haunts him, comes creeping forwards when he least expects it.

One of the worst instances happen a year later while Rick is following him around, one day, claiming he wants to know if he’s even _got_ a life outside of the office anymore. Don doesn’t find him funny and mostly ignores his quips while he shops for groceries.

“So what’s with all the milk-substitutes?”

He blinks and turns to look at the young man - his _friend_ , or at least he thinks he could be a friend. “Pardon?”

Rick shrugs. “Just an observation, Don. You’ve got three kinds of different milk-substitutes in that basket, but I see you use regular milk in your coffee all the time. What, are you secretly some kind of part-time vegan or something?”

It crashes into him all at once. This simple observation of something he’s subconsciously been doing.

Rick is wrong. He’s not “part-time vegan”. It’s his past again, guiding him through the store on pure instinct.

Because he _has_ been buying soy and rice and almond milk, hasn’t he? He’s also checking the ingredients on any kind of product, still, he realizes. Checking them for _milk_ . For _lactose_.

Because that’s something his little princess couldn’t- _can’t-_ have.

Unbidden, his mind drifts.

 

* * *

 

They’re sitting in a crowded emergency room, or rather - Maya’s sitting, he’s leaning on the wall next to them due to the lack of open chairs. It’s almost 11 in the evening, _way_ past Eva’s bedtime, but rules and routines like are that forgotten when the child in question is squirming and fuzzy in her mother’s arms, whimpering and clearly in pain.

Maya, usually the most relaxed out of the two of them when it comes to their baby, is pale and quiet with worry, constantly rocking Eva back and forth, humming lullaby after lullaby, hoping to soothe whatever it is that has her so sick. They had thought it was just a childhood stomach bug, but nothing they try work, and all the while their daughter suffers, culminating in endless crying this evening.

Thus the emergency room.

He forces himself to be calm, to not get out on the floor and pace. Maya needs him calm, _Eva_ needs him calm, and him screaming at the doctors and nurses to hurry or wearing a hole in the floor will do them nothing good.

They are ushered into an examination room half an hour later, hours after their initial arrival, and Eva ends up in a bed much too big for a 3 year old and an IV-drip in her hand to make up for what fluids she’s lost.

Two hellish days of worry and taking turns sitting by her bedside and keeping regular life in check, she’s released with the diagnosis of lactose intolerance.

Maya is brokenhearted at the news - she had been giving Eva hot milk and honey to try to soothe her, only to turn out it just made everything worse. Don holds her as she cries for their baby and all the harm they have unintentionally caused her.

But if there’s anything Don Wei is, it’s a practical man, which leads him to bringing home almost one of every type of milk substitute to be found in the grocery store, from plain lactose-free milk to soy to wheat.

Eva, with the natural precociousness of a 3 year old trying new things, tastes the different milks and proclaims her favorites, refusing any other alternatives.

Rice and almond get cleared for use in food and on her cereal. Soy becomes her favorite for drinking, but _only_ if it’s the unsweetened kind (she wrinkles her nose at that one and says it tastes like how “Mommy’s hair-goo” smells, and while they never find out What she meant, they don’t question her and buy the unsweetened), and lactose-free is labeled “too sticky”. She’s indifferent to wheat milk.

They pretty much become a dairy-free home, but they still get Eva pills, just in case they don’t catch the dairy in something, and she learns how to swallow them like a champ.

_Don is so proud of her, his brave, little darling._

 

* * *

 

Rick snaps his fingers in front of his face, and the memories disperse to their black hole once again.

It’s a frightening realization, that despite everything, it’s still second nature to him to look for milk in anything, no matter what he buys.

Even… even… even when she’s not there anymore, when he shouldn’t have to think about it.

 _“Just in case,”_ his subconscious whispers. “ _Just in case she suddenly finds her way home”._

That’s impossible, of course. She wouldn’t, even if she could - she’s hidden away at Sterns, safe and protected from him.

(Eva sneezes while a soon-to-graduate upperclassman teaches her the best places to sneak out of the school, how to do it, and at which time she should do it. All strictly hypothetical, of course, Sterns has the best security money can buy, didn’t she know? Eva grins and soon goes on her first (unsupervised) trip outside of school grounds in 5 years, returning with a single hole in her right ear. By the time the teachers notice, it’s too late for them to do anything, and the detention and scolding from her caseworker are all worth it.)

“Old habit, I suppose,” he mumbles, and then says more clearly “this stuff can handle not being refrigerated, if left unopened - very practical, in case the power goes out”.

Rick makes a bewildered face at him. “You… have an emergency generator in your house. It stores solar power. Even then, your neighbourhood is ridiculously ritzy and probably has secret back-up generators hooked up to every house. You literally have no reason to have an emergency supply of anything in case the power goes out”.

He bites his tongue, his mouth tasting like ash and bitterness from the lies. “It doesn’t hurt to be prepared”.

For a second, it looks as if Rick is going to call him out on it and demand answers. Mentally, he braces himself for it - but then the younger man nods to himself and says: “Okay, not a part-time vegan, just a closet disaster prepper. Gotcha”.

Don Wei lives to survive his lies another day, but there’s nothing about it that feels good.

(A few weeks later the store has run out of the unsweetened soymilk, and he’s forced to buy the sweetened one. He finds that it has a sickly sweet, synthetic taste to it, and suddenly the comparison to Maya’s hair products make sense when he thinks about it from a toddler’s point of view, when she hadn’t had the words to describe it otherwise).

 

* * *

 

Life goes on. They keep winning and expanding, and their collective fortunes grow. He had a hope all of this business would make the void easier to face, but it only grows.

Contrary to everything he’d hoped for, he actually starts thinking about the child more. The child whom he left and never looked back, the child who cried in the rain, the child who is almost 11 now.

~~_He made a mistake, he made a m i s t a k e, but he’s dangerous, she is safe and better off without him, hemissesher, hemissesher, he-wants-to-hold-her-close-and-tell-her-he’s-sorry-but-he’s-too-afraid-and-proud-and-he-can’t-he-MUST-NOT-go-BACK._ ~~

He’s out doing rounds in the pit when he overhears two of the technicians speaking.

“Yeah, it’s my kid’s birthday soon, but I’ve got no idea what to get him. He keeps asking for all of these gadgets and such, sure, but just these technical names - son, I may be a mechanic, but that doesn’t mean I automatically know what a D15C-player 2K78 is without some kind of description. Same goes for whatever gaming console he wants”.

There are agreeing murmurs around the group, and Don’s mind goes spinning.

Ev- the child’s birthday is also soon, isn’t it? It’s late spring, she was born in early summer.

It’s as if his heart and mind stumble a bit, and before he knows it, he’s sat down at his table and opens up his computer for something other than work.

A part of him is screaming at him that he’s getting too close, too involved, that he shouldn’t do it… but he looks up electronics and other toys and wonders, with his heart lurching and breaking all at once, what a pre-teen girl might like. It’s like fighting his way through a jungle, navigating all of the online websites - clothing, toys, a myriad of games...

And then… for the first time in six years he looks at the banking account that handles all of the money that goes towards Sterns and examines the account that specifically adds a bit of an allowance for clothing and other essential needs every month. He doesn’t dare look at what purchases might have been made with the account, that’s a breach of privacy he would never commit, that child doesn’t belong to him anymore.

 _That girl was all Maya’s and he took her mother away from her. He has no right to even look at her anymore_.

But even so… his hands shake as they move across the keyboard, and he finds himself depositing the exact amount of money needed to buy a digital music-player, modeled to look like the music players used in the early half of the century, into the account.

He fights off the break-down until he is alone in the darkness of his own home, collapsing by the locked door that leads to the room that once belonged to a little girl who liked rabbits and strawberries and all soft things.

(Eva blinks in surprise when she realizes that her bank-card suddenly has a lot more money on it than she anticipated, and happily uses it to order new parts for her Baby and books on vehicular engineering).

(A few weeks later her birthday falls on a visitors’ day, and she spends it in the front hall by Ned’s station, desperately waiting for a visit, a call, a letter, anything…! ….but it never comes. Of course it doesn’t. Her roommate gifts her a retro discman in the evening, and she lays awake long past midnight looking at the magazine clippings on her wall, wondering _why_. Three years later she’s 14 and spends the night surrounded by girls she thought hated her, crying as they offer her more comfort and love than her own father has given her in 9 years).

 

* * *

 

He screws up again.

Things may have been rocky between him and Rick for awhile, but he never thought it would come to this.

He watches as Rick leaves, sneering that he didn’t sign up to race under a slave driver and cursing the man Don has become.

He says nothing. Maybe he should, but his pride refuses.

So he’s become a little perfectionistic. That’s not his problem. If Rick wants to continue making mistakes that could get him _killed_ , then Don’s only _glad_ to wash his hands of him.

Everything he does is to prevent another racer from being killed. His carelessness cost him Maya, he refuses to see another racer follow the same fate.

_But it still hurts, still stings, to see Rick - his second chance - leave, and Don wishes he could truly understand what he did wrong THIS time._

They get new racers. Many are eager to work with Wei Racing, to race for the best team on the _planet_. Even without Rick, they’re still on top.

And then, suddenly… there’s a teenager in his garage, a strange boy who turns out to be an extremely skilled girl, this Molly.

He hires her and thinks nothing more of it, just another apprentice mechanic, they’ve got loads of those and true talent is hard to come by, except…

Except then the _president_ contacts him and suddenly the fate of the entire planet is on _his_ shoulders, and somehow Molly ends up as a stowaway, and he takes back everything he thought about “talented young people”.

Molly is absolutely infuriating, a menace of a child who openly challenges his authority and cannot, will not, follow any of his orders without protesting first, and every time she _does_ actually follow them, it’s like there’s always just a touch of vitriol and spite behind it. Molly who wears a mockery of Maya’s tattoos on her face and a bold splatter of red at the crown of her head, who looks at him with eyes full of fire and steel, and who has a spirit that he’s only witnessed twice before, and only once did he ever see one that could match it.

He’s not talking about Rick.

Don refuses to hate a child - because that’s what she is. A child brimming with raw talent, not just in piloting, but also in mechanics. More than once he overhears Stan and Koji whisper between themselves, after her little stunt with her rocket-seat and the Whizzing Arrow, about brilliance at such a young age, about how they need to steal her from him - _him, of all people_ \- and take her to Miguel to raise and hone those skills into something truly amazing.

The very idea of stealing that girl from him - as if there’s anything to steal. If they want to take that little delinquent in, they can have her. There’s no room in his organization for the attitude that she displays.

Even so… a part of him also feels a certain sense of protectiveness over her. Something that makes the void in his heart grow bigger and more consuming the more he watches her interact with the rest of the team, something that makes the malicious voices whisper even louder when he tries to sleep, sneaking into his nightmares and echoing through the day.

He will admit that her budding teamwork and loyalty to their gunner, young Jordan Wilder, is admirable to watch - he doesn’t think the boy and Rick could ever work as seamlessly as the two do, the age-gap is simply too wide, and even if it hadn’t been, then the boy would have to let go of his fanboy worship for anything to work. He disapproves of her stunt with the Nourasian - they cannot afford such carelessness as to _trust_ an ally of the Krogs. He is right to send Rick after her - lingering hostility and bitterness between them aside, Rick knows what he’s doing, and who better to train her than the old Earth Racing Champion?

And yet… he sees that hesitation, whenever anyone tries to get closer to her, sees the hunch to her shoulders and the guarded look in her eyes.

He looks at Molly and sees a broken child hiding behind a wall, much like his own, and wonders who failed her. Who hurt this child to the point where every stranger is an enemy and trust is more easily given to people who _aren’t_ humans?

_(She does not make him think of his own child back home. She does not. Not a chance in hell that Maya’s daughter, the sweet little girl he left behind, would grow up into THAT… surely not.)_

Her results with Rick are astounding, and he begins to think that maybe someone’s finally gotten through that thick skull of hers. (He does not appreciate the jokes that he’s finally met his match in a little teenager, though).

Then Spirit happens.

Gods above, he had hoped to never see that creature again. This… this _thing_ that took Maya from him, who made a little girl motherless, who destroyed _everything_ he had ever loved.

Now, _there’s_ someone he will never stop hating until the day he dies.

Molly goes berserk.

Watching her race is terrifying. Even more than watching Maya do any of her stunts, the blind fury and destruction chilling to the bone.

Chilling… and yet somehow… also…

 _Heartbreaking_.

He doesn’t blame Rick one second for leaving. He doesn’t know why he stays with his eyes glued to the monitor, but he’s there to witness Molly finally coming out of her rage. For a second he thinks it’s over.

Then Spirit strikes back.

Watching the crash sends his mind straight back to that day 10 years in the past, and it feels like hours pass before his heart starts beating again.

 _Not another, not another, not another_.

The medics bring them back. They’re scraped and bruised, but otherwise unscathed, which is more than he could’ve ever hoped for from racing against Spirit.

He sees Molly sit on the roof of the pit later that night, staring across the water silently, her eyes misty and far away.

For the briefest of moments he wonders what she sees, what went through her head during that race. Then he shrugs it off in favor of letting his own darkness swallow him until sunrise.

Strangely, Rick changes his attitude after the entire ordeal. Where his pesky comments and jokes about a teenage girl finally besting him in verbal combat used to happen every few days, they start coming almost daily, and several times a day, and he _swears_ he’s being laughed at, but he can never quite prove it.

He doesn’t know when Rick suddenly decided his true call in life is as a comedian, but he gets nothing but cryptic answers when he finally asks.

“Just trust me on this one, Don - if only you’d look a little closer, then you’d really see why it’s so funny that you keep butting heads with the little mouse”.

He doesn’t know when Rick suddenly became some kind of guru prophet, either, but he appreciates it even _less_ than the jokes.

 

* * *

 

By some kind of miracle, they end up on Oban. He’d quietly been certain that the Nourasian prince would lose to prevent them from qualifying, but…

(Maybe there was something smart in Molly fraternizing with him anyways.)

It’s while on Oban that things start to change, as if the so-called Mother Planet is slowly opening his eyes to something that he previously been too caught up in his own web of lies and denial to truly see.

Maybe it’s because Rick is gone, so that there is now no existing buffer between himself and Molly in their interactions. Maybe it’s because the new setting allows him to look at the girl with a fresh mindset. Maybe it’s because she’s finally coming into her own as a racer, fully dependent on her own skills and strategies and without a coach for support.

There could be a lot of reasons, and all of them either wrong or right. He doesn’t know anymore, doesn’t know if he ever will.

But suddenly… things _click,_ and a new voice in the back of his mind cuts through the void, whispering _“look, look, blink and you’ll miss it, so close yet so far away, wake up and see”_ and suddenly every little familiar thing, every hint and clue he’d dismissed as random chance and insignificant, as a mere projection of what might have been on an innocent girl, all come together at once between the race where Molly pulls off _that_ specific stunt and his call with Mrs. Stern in the frozen wasteland.

The veil falls away, and like a _huli jing_ shifting forms, the girl changes overnight, and _Molly_ falls away…

And _Eva_ takes her place.

Like that, the Past catches up to him, and he is faced with the realization that it’s been caught up with him for months without him realizing it.

 _(He’s spent so long running away, he’d never even considered for a moment that the girl he left behind might choose to run after him)_.

It all crashes into him at once after he tries to confront her following her win and catches her lie, though that’s not what does it. What hits him is what she counters with:

 _“If I were_ your _daughter, you would know it immediately. I mean, you wouldn’t really need to ask me,_ would you _?”_

He collapses against the wall once he’s alone in his improvised office.

The void grows, and for once he doesn’t fight it as the darkness in his mind blinds him with the severity of what he’s done. Every little interaction and confrontation, every harsh word and scolding, replays in his mind, but with the knowledge that the rude brat, the delinquent with a chip on her shoulder, the unwelcome stowaway is his _daughter_ and oh gods above _what has he done, that is his daughter down there, she’s been with them the WHOLE TIME?!_

Suddenly all of her anger, all of her resentment and disrespect towards him, makes sense. Of course it does - he’s spent all of her life letting her down, how could he possibly ever demand _respect_ from her? He’d had the audacity to tell her of his daughter back on Earth and claim to have projected onto her, when all along… he was speaking to that _very same daughter and didn’t even realize it_.

He’s such a fool. But he supposes it’s fitting… all of the times he wondered who failed this girl…

_He should’ve just have looked in a mirror, then he’d have the answer._

Some part of him tells him he’s in the right, still. That leaving her at Sterns was for her own good, that it was the right choice.

For the first time since that day, he wishes that that particular voice would _shut up_. He can lie to himself all he wants, but Don knows deep down that he’s a bad liar - especially when faced with such glaring evidence.

 _Of course_ Eva wouldn’t thrive in a place like Sterns, what was he even _thinking_ when he chose that place?! Maya had always had a strong opposition to authority - he was lucky she’d loved him, or she’d probably never have accepted a manager in the first place. And if there was one thing that was undeniably clear when she was little, it was that Eva would inherit every drop of her mother’s spirit. Of course Sterns would be stifling enough to her to escape. _(And how had she even done that in the first place, and why hadn’t they contacted him the second she did?! No matter how much he hated thinking about Eva and Sterns, he’d made sure to update his contact information!)_

Because she’s Maya’s daughter. _His_ daughter.

Of course she would just push back thrice as hard on anyone trying to get her to fit into something as restricting and, well, _stern,_ as that boarding school. Maya had been the same, heck, _he_ had been the same to a certain degree in his youth, just more subtle about it.

And that star and the stripe on her cheeks… not a mockery, but perhaps a genuine tribute to Maya, to her mother.

He falls asleep against that wall. When he awakens again, the world is different, and long suppressed instincts roars to life. He realizes that when he sees the location for the race and 10 years worth of worry slams into him, knocking away all thoughts of admitting that he knows who she really is.

A canyon of nothing but sulfur? And _acid_?

Oh hell no.

Especially not if she’s approaching it with that cold, borderline overconfident attitude she’s suddenly displaying.

~~_Too much like Maya, Maya’s daughter through and through, he needs to PROTECT her._ ~~

To be fair, he doesn’t really expect her to listen to him. Maya had been much the same, always with an air of gentle dismissiveness to her when she brushed off his concerns and told him to stop worrying.

Moll- _Eva_ doesn’t respond like Maya ever did. Her eyes burn with crimson fire as she challenges him, distrust and anger clear in her tone.

 _Hurt_ , perhaps. That he doesn’t believe in her skills, doesn’t trust in her to secure victory.

He doesn’t blame her - he’s truly done nothing to earn her loyalty or respect.

He resolves then and there to change that, and thus offers her the truth. That he doesn’t want to see anything happen to her, hoping against all odds that she’ll listen and _know_ that he’s honest with her.

_(He sent Maya to her ruin, and did everything to keep Eva from following a similar path. But now he’s got no choice, because she followed him, and deep within his heart he knows that losing Eva, losing his only child, will break him beyond repair.)_

But then the Avatar calls for the racers to get ready, and she rebuffs his warnings again, reminding him of everything she’s gone through to get as far. Not that he _needs_ reminding, it only makes him feel worse for how he’s treated her, despite all she’s suffered through.

_His daughter. He knows his actions and behavior wouldn’t have been justifiable, even if she wasn’t, but his DAUGHTER._

The race begins, and then Muir happens.

Her screams will forever be burned into his memory.

His heart shatters and the darkness floods him as he prays to anything and everything in the entire galaxy. Every god, every spirit, _the Avatar himself_ . Racers aren’t allowed to kill each other - surely… _surely_ he won’t let that _insect_ take her away like that?

 _Not yet, not yet, not yet_.

What follows is one of the most hellish half-hours he’s ever sat through, but when Muir brings her out of his giant pod and deposits her in Jordan’s arms, the relief is the greatest thing he’s ever felt.

He decides right then and there to shape up and stop being such a coward.

No more running away from a past that has already caught up with him. He’s going to work hard to become a man, a father, whom Eva will want to walk besides.

(His resolve is only strengthened when the President all but tells him to sacrifice his only child for the sake of the Ultimate Prize. Never before has he been more tempted to commit treason and just disobey orders, damn the consequences).

 

* * *

 

While witnessing the inner parts of Oban was like something out of a dream, a vision without compare that few would ever get to see, Don would really prefer it if the Avatar could stop putting Eva through such dangers. The moment where everything went dark and he once again thought he’d lost her cut 10 years off of his life-span, and he’s not sure he can take much more.

(And he’s got no idea what to think of the sudden realization that Jordan has _feelings_ for his daughter, but there’s something oddly humorous in confronting his clumsy attempt at confessing. If only he knew he’d just accidentally done his little speech to her _father_ instead of just the team manager.)

 _(He knows he’s probably got no right to have opinions about whomever Eva would date at this point, but a part of him thinks that the boy has_ a lot _of work to do if he wants to be worthy of her. Same goes for that_ prince _)_.

Then Sul disappears in that strange vortex, the Avatar doing _nothing_ to try and help. This creature is supposed to be the most powerful thing in the entire galaxy - and yet something like that can just happen, and he does nothing?

Fear and anger and worry all grow in his heart, and finally he makes the decision to reveal that he knows the truth to her. He had wanted to wait until maybe they were on Earth or she herself would come forward, but the longer they progress into the finals… the more he worries she won’t come back.

So after catching her with Jordan early the next morning (and he swears, he’s going to have _words_ with that boy once everything is over), he tells her that he knows who she is.

She freezes. She bolts.

……..Maya _did_ always tell him he can be a _little_ too straight to the point when it comes to emotional matters, often when he was nervous. She had been a good buffer to this issue.

 _But Maya’s not here anymore, and he’s afraid. So very afraid_.

He pretends not to hear the critique from Stan as he follows her, having a good idea of where she’s going.

He finds her in the Whizzing Arrow. Curled up in a ball, looking smaller and more fragile than he’s ever seen her. (Her usual personality - or perhaps it’s just the Molly persona, gods above, he doesn’t know his own daughter anymore, what has he done - is so loud and demanding, it’s easy to forget that she’s still just a small teenager).

It’s… not a nice conversation. Hearing how she’d imagined their reunion going… it’s the dream of a child, something that, by all means, should have been impossible. And if things had been a little different, if she hadn’t run away from Sterns, if he had been allowed to continue to just pretend the past didn’t exist… then it would still be impossible.

He tries to explain his actions with what are, deep down, the same lies he’s told himself all this time - that she was too much like Maya, that he was doing it for _her_ , that it was all for the best that he left her that school.

_His heart breaks when she cries as she asks him why he never made any attempt to contact her, voice faint and trembling as she asking him “why”. And then, as more lies spill from his lips… her spirit roars to life, and he’s afraid of what will come of it._

She counters every sorry excuse, every pathetic lie, with incredible ease, fire and fury and _contempt_ burning in her eyes as she looks at him and tells him _her_ story, a story he’d never even considered before.

 _“You think I didn’t_ **_know_ ** _?”_

No. No, he hadn’t thought of it when he got Wei Racing up and running again, he swears he hadn’t. Because in his mind, she had always been that small child, frozen in time in a photograph of happier days, and trapped in a room that hasn’t been unlocked for 10 years.

But she’s not an innocent child anymore, as she proves to him, spitting hurt and anger and destroying everything he’s been using to keep himself together since that day.

The lies finally stop, and all he’s left with the painful truth.

“I’m sorry… I still couldn’t face you. I was the one who destroyed your mother… and our family”.

She growls, turning her eyes away. It becomes his turn to listen. Listen to how she, too, lied to herself - not to forget, but to hold on to whatever fragile hope or trust she may still have had in him to come _back_.

It’s like a dagger is stabbed through his heart when, despite everything, she reveals that she was still proud of him.

_He’s been such a fool… a selfish, blind, fool…_

And then…

“The other children thought I was an _orphan_ … and they were _right_ . _I had no one!_ ”

If the revelation that she’d held on to hope for all of these years is a knife, then this one is like a thousand needles made of ice, shooting straight through his bloodstream.

He tries to apologize… but she shuts him down. Calls him out on mistakes he’s never even considered, looking at him like he’s the scum of the Earth.

By this point, he feels like it.

“I really wish you were - the day I finally ran away from school and met you, _you didn’t even recognize me!_ ”

That’s when the void swallows him up and leaves him a cold shell. He’s been trying to push it away and make excuses for himself, but what Eva says confirms that there are none.

So blinded by his own delusions and lies… he had forgotten one of the very first thing Maya noticed about their daughter, the one thing he had secretly been proud of, once upon a time.

_She has Maya’s eyes… but his face._

He sees it now, as his mind flashes between _that day_ and the _now_.

That’s _his_ expression when he’s angry or displeased, when he wants nothing more than to shout and often does. That’s _his_ growl when he’s too frustrated to find words, that’s the way _his_ shoulders set when he’s holding himself back.

All channeled through Maya’s indomitable spirit, unknowingly copying her manner of speech and expressing herself. _She’d always been good at that, and it appears Eva has inherited the talent_.

_How… how had he not seen it?!_

_He knows how. He’d been so busy looking for Maya in her, and then rejecting any hint as delusion, he hadn’t been able to see himself._

“I broke my neck for you for seven _teen_ races before you _finally_ understood.” She speaks with such calmness, like they’re just discussing the weather - “What a joke! To you, I was _dead_ ! I didn’t _exist_!” - and then she turns around and spits ice at him again.

_It’s the truth. It’s the truth, and he doesn’t want it, but to ignore the truth would be to lose her, to push her away, and he can’t do that. Not again, not again, not again._

And then, of course, the Avatar sends out his call, and she is still determined to race, no matter what.

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised. A small part of him had hoped that, maybe, once… _this…_ was all over, when they’d had a chance to talk at least a _little_ , she would stop risking her life, stop participating in this senseless competition. (They don’t even know what they’re fighting for, anymore, have never known, and the further they get into it, the less he thinks the Ultimate Prize is all its hyped up to it).

Apparently he’s still got no ideas what actually motivates her to race.

It’s almost too easy to slip into old habits - to yell, to get angry, because she is a _child_ , and she just won’t listen to him, listen to _reason-!_ ……..but that would accomplish nothing.

Maya’s spirit and his stubborn nature. A force to be reckoned with, and really, this isn’t about her racing or not. It’s about his fear and concern as a father - feelings he doesn’t really deserve to have for her, but still does - roaring to life after so many years being suppressed and hidden away.

Still, he wants to at least try. Just one more time, one more attempt.

 _No more lies_.

“.....I have no right to stop you….. but I’d like you to reconsider. I couldn’t bear to lose you again”.

The way she looks up at him is just as heartbreaking as everything. The surprise, the wonder, the hope.

Like she hadn’t expected him to actually care.

He’s not surprised. He’s spent the last 10 years telling himself he _didn’t care_ , when all this time he’s maybe been caring all _too much_.

She still decides to race. He doesn’t say more to stop her.

Getting back up and finding the rest of the team sitting around, he tries to fall back into his usual role. But being the constantly commandeering manager suddenly feels so hollow, and it dissipates half-way through his order to get them all to their posts.

The race begins, and they fall… and keep falling… and keep falling…

A sinking feeling starts weighing his stomach down, and a chill goes up his spine.

 _Something’s wrong_.

He responds by giving them orders to stay in the air - stay in the air for as long as possible.

But a few moments later…

That sharp, white flash…

The screams that are cut off as they lose radio-contact…

He’s called out her name in panic before this moment, but now… _now it’s so much more_.

No _no_ n _O_ _N_ o no _no_ ** _N_** _O N_ ** _O NO!!!!_**

Stan and Koji try to reassure him that they’re okay, but he can feel it, it was the same when Maya crashed, this cold, empty feeling of _loss_ and _life_ sniffed out too early.

_Oh gods above, what has he done… it’s all his fault._

 

* * *

 

The night comes creeping, slowly and clinging to everything like a thick layer of tar, much like the void inside his heart.

Two lives who didn’t have to be snuffed out so soon, all because of his incompetence. And really, what was he thinking - letting two _teenagers_ participate in a sham of a race like this?

 _Just when he’d decided to finally shape up, to be better for Eva, to be a worthy parent to her, to be a_ **_father_ ** _again… and then this happens._

And then there’s Jordan’s family to inform. To tell them that he’s the one who’s responsible for the loss of their son…

_Gods………… he is such a fool……_

 

* * *

 

A miracle happens.

When he hears the sounds of their entrance portal, he first thinks it’s Satis coming back. The strange, little creature had come by after the end of the disaster of a race to offer condolences, but they had felt hollow to Don.

But then… something inside of him _sparks_ and he rushes out… and there they are. A little scraped up, but otherwise none the worse for wear.

Happiness and relief, _so much relief_ , and gratitude to whatever god or spirit that has once again held a protecting hand over his daughter overflows him, because she’s _alive_ , she’s- she’s looking heartbroken… like all the life has been drained from her.

“What’s the matter?”

_“......everything………”_

 

* * *

 

The Ultimate Prize.

The thing they’ve fought for in these past three months, the thing the President has ordered him to “bring home”, the only thing between them and utter annihilation of all humankind via Crog invasion.

_The Ultimate. Prize._

Is that the winner becomes the next _Avatar_?

And Satis. Little, old, crazy _Satis_ has been the Avatar this whole time?!

He doesn’t know if he should be angry or laugh hysterically.

To gain immense power and abilities beyond the realm of human imagination… but in return be tethered to this desolate and lonely planet, the physical embodiment of the centre of the galaxy…

He doesn’t know if he should consider it an honor or a fate worse than death. Especially not if Eva becomes the next Avatar.

Don knows he’s a selfish man - everything he’s done for the past 10 years have, despite what he might have told himself, ultimately been for selfish reasons.

But damn it all to hell, that’s _his daughter_.

His strong, brave, too stubborn for her own good daughter, who has longed to get her family back for so long, who must’ve been so _lonely_ at Sterns while he kept telling himself she was better off without him, when in reality… maybe they just needed _each other_.

And then... then he learns her true motivation for getting caught up in this mess.

 _All she wanted was to get Maya back_.

……….what kind of a man doesn’t realize that the one thing his motherless child would want, if they could wish for _anything_ , would be to get that mother back?

_They really are quite alike, the two of them, aren’t they? His girl, through and through._

He doesn’t get much time to dwell on this, because he has to contact the President.

It’s a chilling conversation, one that leaves him with a pit in his stomach and a bitter taste upon his tongue.

_Yes, treason sounds more and more tempting by the hour._

Thus, Eva deciding not to race is at once both the greatest relief he’s ever experienced, but also one of the most painful things to witness.

All of that drive, all of that fire, all of that spirit… snuffed out, just like that.

 _(Grief, he’s come to know, is one hell of a burden, once the hope that kept it all at bay is gone)_.

But then it comes back, out of the blue, stronger than before, a bright blaze that spreads and lights up the rest of the team, and he’s not sure if he should be happy or despair. Because on one hand, it’s incredible to see all of that life back in her, shining brighter than it ever did in Maya…. but on the other hand….

_This is the day he loses her, isn’t it?_

He tries to persuade her to stay behind, just one final time… hoping that maybe the promise of _home_ could be enough. But while her response is chilling, it’s also one of the strongest things he’s ever heard any person say.

_No 15 year old should carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, and yet she’s willingly doing just that._

In this one moment, Eva is Eva, not some ghost of his past, not a child mirroring her parents - this is all _her_.

Maya… Maya would’ve been so proud.

He tells her as much.

_The racers fall._

 

* * *

 

She wins.

 _She wins_.

After pulling off one last death-defying stunt against _General Kross the Cruel_ , one he’s seen Maya do so many times before… she wins.

_………..oh………_

He can hear Stan and Koji celebrate in the background, but it’s muffled by the ringing in his ears and the thundering roar of his heartbeat. He’s faintly aware that he’s on the floor, but he doesn’t know when he fell over.

_He is so proud of her………_

Everything that happens after that is a bit of a blur.

The Arrow returns in their pod… Eva disappears, he sees it on the screen the golden light of the Avatar engulfing her… and but 5 minutes later, she’s running through the pod, calling “later, dad!”.... and then….

Black, swirling miasma creeps from somewhere, engulfing everything and growing _vines_ or _tentacles_ or whatever it is to spread to the other pods, and it just keeps _spreading-_!

Giving out the orders to _pack up and evacuate_ **_immediately_** happens without him even having to consider it for a moment.

_The temple falls…  Stan and Koji drag him inside the Whizzing Arrow..._

He doesn’t get to see what happens after they take off, because suddenly there’s a call for “brace!” and Eva is screaming as the star-racer tumbles from the sudden force that hits them from behind.

It feels a lot like the end of the world.

_For some reason, he thinks it very well may be._

 

* * *

 

They end up in a desolate desert landscape, huddled up in maybe the only temple still standing on the planet.

 _Everything is gone_.

Witnessing her breakdown, even from afar, is one of the worst things he’s ever experienced. So much vulnerability suddenly right up at the surface.

And he can do nothing. Much as he wants to go to her, to offer comfort and protection… is that really his place, anymore? It hasn’t been for 10 years, what right does he have to act as if none of that mattered?

_What a mess…_

10 years too late… and stuck on a dying planet, unable to do anything to change the situation.

For once, everything is out of his hands, and what little strength he thought he had is useless.

At least he can still try to connect to the President to get some kind of help. It’s worth a try, and their only hope. But the relief he feels at actually getting through is quickly crushed by the sight that meets him - the President leaning over in his chair (his throne, the man had never treated it as anything else). And then the chilling cut-ins from military operatives…

 _He was right, it’s the end of the world, in more ways than one_.

When Stan comes to check on him, he lies.

He can’t let them know that their home very well may be mere minutes from getting destroyed via the Crogs. They need whatever shred of hope they can get, and if he’ll have to lie again for them to keep it, he’ll do it.

 _This is the one burden he can bear on his own, he won’t let them worry about this, too_.

Then the Nourasian prince and his beetle appear.

Though he didn’t think it could be possible, the news he comes bearing are even more chilling than what’s happening on Earth. But perhaps worst of all, it comes with the confirmation of what he’s been fearing ever since she decided to race anyways.

_This really is the day he loses her._

The pain stings, and his regrets flood him. Every day spent apart from her, every visit that didn’t happen, every phone call never made, every letter never written, every little lie that told him she was better off without him.

She agrees to do it.

A single tear falls.

Before he’s had a chance to adjust, she’s ready to go. But there’s one last thing he has to say to her. While he still has the time.

It’s the one thing she’s been without for far too long. Deep down, it’s the one thing he’s never stopped doing.

He almost can’t say it for all of the emotions that well up in him when she responds to her name - _her true name, not the fake one she’s been called for almost all of the time he’s known her again_ \- and asks: “Yes, dad? What is it?”

But she has to know - he can’t let her become the Avatar without knowing this one thing.

“I… I… I love you”.

The look in her eyes is one that will haunt him forever. Sad and heartbroken and happy and hopeful all at once.

 _And it’s all pointless, because she’s not coming home. This time HE is the one left behind_.

He turns to Jordan and Prince Aikka one final time with a single plea.

“You boys take good care of my daughter”.

After that, he can’t keep the void inside him at bay and quickly leaves to mourn all he has lost because of his own selfishness and failure to protect and nurture the one who should have mattered the most.

And yet… when the motors start, he can’t help but return to get one final look at her. As beautiful and strong as her mother, the epitome of bravery in face of great danger, but also something incredibly unique and her own.

He doesn’t do anything to stop the tears as he watches her leave. He’s been holding back his emotions, denying the hurt and the pain, for so long… it’s time to stop and face reality.

_He just wishes he’d realized the error of his ways sooner._

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t know how much time passes after they depart. Nothing in the sky moves anymore, as if the planet itself has stopped rotating.

Stan and Koji leave him alone. They haven’t said much of anything to him after his reveal, but something tells him Stan, at least, has questions. (It may or may not be the suspicious glares he’s been sending him now and then that tips him off, but for now he’s grateful for the solitude).

It’s torture, just waiting for _something_ to happen, when he doesn’t know _what_ , exactly, he’s waiting _for_.

Suddenly, however, it just _happens_ . A sharp flash of brilliant blue light appears in the distance, _growing_ and **growing** and **_growing_ ** until it engulfs them all.

He loses consciousness.

When he wakes up again… everything is _green_.

The desert is now a lush field of soft grass, the trees are back, and strange animals fly through the sky full of snowy clouds. In the distance, he can hear water flowing. And there… floating through the sky…

The Avatar’s temple, sending out a new call to gather.

“They made it…”

He tries not to think of what all of this implies, of where, exactly, his daughter currently is. It’s too painful. But then all of that is washed away as he sees a familiar figure standing next to Prince Aikka in the distance.

Red on black, crowning a slight figure clad in the Earth Team’s uniform.

Barely a moment passes, and then he’s calling out her name and rushing towards her, Stan and Koji hot on his heels.

_“Dad!”_

The smile he gets could outshine the sun, and then he’s got an armful of the most precious thing in the world, all _warm_ and _whole_ and _alive_ , so full of _life_ she looks like she’s about to burst. She hugs him back, nestling into the crook of his neck like she did when she was little, and all of a sudden the void inside of him dims to a murky gray, and it’s no longer quite as bottomless.

_What the hell was he thinking back then? How could he ever truly live without this great source of joy and warmth in his life?_

The only mar in the happiness is that Jordan isn’t with her. And while he knows nothing of what happened to him, the long looks she gives the temple as they leave and the blown kiss he pretends he doesn’t see give him a pretty good idea.

_(Three children went out to save the galaxy, only two returned - but not the two he expected. Don knows he shouldn’t really be this relieved that this is the case. He doesn’t look forward to telling Jordan’s family that their little boy won’t come home, but… for what it’s worth, he thinks the next 10.000 years are in good hands. If only because of the immense sacrifice the young man made for all of them)._

 

* * *

 

The return to Earth isn’t pretty. He doesn’t blame Stan and Koji for being angry with him, and he knows he’s got a lot of work ahead of him. This is only furthered to be true once they’re dropped off and surrounded by the military.

There’s a lot to fix before everything’s going to be okay. A fight, a life-changing experience, and a shared embrace does not a relationship repair.

That doesn’t mean they’re both not going to try.

Don isn’t stupid (or deaf, for that manner), he’s heard the comments, overheard Eva’s conversation with Koji. He knows what he did was wrong, despite all the lies he told himself to not feel guilty. No matter how much he wishes it, he can’t change the past.

But with a lot of work and some much needed introspection, he thinks he’s got a pretty good shot at changing the future.

 

* * *

 

They said fatherhood suited him.

Perhaps they were wrong.

Perhaps they weren’t. He certainly hasn’t been a good fit for fatherhood for a very long time.

 _But one day, he hopes he can once again be the dad Eva deserves_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don Wei is an emotional wreck absolutely no concept of healthy coping mechanisms and methods of dealing with grief, sorry, I don't make the rules.
> 
> In all honesty, poking around inside Don's mind and heart was as fun as it was painful, and I've got a lot more things I'd like to explore about him. But for now this mammoth of a chapter is at 29 and a half pages - that's 56.601keystrokes. That's longer than my BA project was. So for the time being, this is what you get.
> 
> (Also, the headcanon that Eva is lactose intolerant came to be when thinking about Don subconsciously buying things with Eva in mind, because denial or not, I do think he never stopped caring about her in those 10 years).
> 
> Next up is going to be about the time immediately after Oban - prepare for more Stan backstory and switch-ups in the POV throughout the chapter.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I hope I'll see you guys back here next time!
> 
> \- NordicTwin


	3. Soldier Boy's Sanctuary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are a lot of things Stan doesn't like.  
> The military is one of them. Parents who treat their children like crap is another one.  
> When he's suddenly forced to deal with both of these at the same time... he's got a few choice words to say.  
> And some old scars that need to be fixed, before he can truly work on patching up someone else.

If there’s one thing Stan doesn’t like, it’s the military.

Nothing against Jordan - he’s a good kid, a little cocky and maybe a little too big for his boots, but still a good kid. A good gunner, for sure, but nothing much in the chain of things, just a rookie.

Nah, his issue is more with the big guys _running_ it.

See, he’s figured out all those hot shots who are in charge of the whole thing. Little men in big boots with no hope of growing into them (unlike Jordan who had potential in spades), put in positions of authority that they really have no right to, and so think they can get away with _anything_ , and they do, because nobody will _touch_ them because of the “potential scandal”.

**_Stan Abaroa_ ** knows that all too well. Koji, too, from associating with him - that’s what 15 years of friendship will get you.

Just as much as he hates the military, he hates so-called _parents_ who thinks they can do whatever they want, simply because they’re the one in power over a young, human being. And, well, after 13 years of living under such people, he thinks he’s gotten pretty good at spotting kids in similar situations, that he knows what to keep an eye out for.

(The guarded look in their eyes, the vulnerability that may or may not be hidden behind an attitude crafted to make them seem stronger, the difficulties or inabilities to trust - the list is long, and Stan has been through most of it).

_Molly_ , their stowaway, is no exception.

He may give her a bit of a hard time at first, but he does that to pretty much everybody, and he quickly stops when looking at her starts triggering flashbacks, and her sheer amount of pure _talent_ in mechanics start shining through.

“Once we get back, I’m taking that kid to Uncle Miguel, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me,” he tells Koji after three days on Alwas. 

Koji smiles at him. “You certainly seem spirited, compared to the usual reactions to situations like this”.

He looks away and wrenches off gloves that really are way too warm for the climate on Alwas. “Tch. Talented girl like her… I wonder what kind of life she’s fled from, if literally stowawaying onto an off-planet mission was the better option compared to staying”.

His friend offers no commentary to this.

As they progress through the race and he watches her grow as a pilot, he stops getting flashbacks from looking at her. Instead, he tries to piece the puzzle together little by little. In many ways she’s like he was at her age, but there’s constantly something about it that feels a little off.

Particularly in her interactions with Don. Like she wants his approval, but also doesn’t want anything to do with him. Almost like she’s waiting for something. A bit like he’d been acting around - but no, he doesn’t like to think of those old ghosts.

And then the world almost fucking ends and it turns out that what is off about her entire “neglected kid” vibe has grounds in a _seriously fucked up situation what the hell, he’s going to kill a man_.

He ends up spending the “night” on the ship back to Earth in a secluded corner, silently fuming and trying to keep himself from going over there and actually punch Don Wei. 

At some point Koji approaches him, dropping down next to him, sitting shoulder to shoulder like they’ve done so many times before.

“Talk to me”.

Stan lets out a long growl that eventually turns into a sigh as all of his anger just… dissipates. Changes. He doesn’t face him, not fully, but he can still see his best friend out of the corner of his eye. “There are… _so many things…_ that make sense now. And I don’t know if that’s a bad or a good thing”.

“Hmm…” Koji leans his head back against the wall. “How’re you feeling? I’m chancing a guess you weren’t quite seeing Don Wei, back there?”

Sometimes he hates how well Koji knows him - it’s a blessing and a curse to be close to someone who’s so good at reading all his triggers and hints as to when bad memories get a little too close.

“You know, I’m not even going to deny that. We’re in space, screw my pride, right?”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of”.

“Yeah, well, I don’t really have that much to be proud of, either,” he breathes out through his teeth and wishes he could have a smoke. “Gods, what a mess this clusterfuck turned out to be”.

They sit together in silence like that for a bit, as he lets himself get lost in old memories, from when he was younger than Molly. (Or rather, Eva. Eva Wei, only daughter of Don Wei and his late wife, _Maya the Moonchaser_. No wonder the kid is good, she’s got the blood of a legend running through her).

He remembers what it was like, living with a parent who didn’t give a shit. Or, well, two in his case. His father - all high and mighty in everything he did, at once denying and accepting of their hispanic roots - and his mother, well… 

His mother never really cared to know him, and he never really cared to know her either. What he _does_ remember is stained with the stench of too-sweet perfume and bitter alcohol on her breath.

The difference between himself and Molly _(Eva, he really needs to start catching on to that name, or something else… maybe something a little new and more fitting)_ is that she actually got to know what happiness was before her life fell apart, and his was messed up from the moment he was born.

Koji puts a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to go keep an eye on her for tonight. Poor girl’s been through too much in too little time”.

Stan nods and braces as his best friend uses him as support to get up. “Good call. Go work your weird comfort-magic-jutsu thing”.

Koji snorts and pushes at his knee with his foot. “Shove off, Stan. Try to get some rest too, yeah?”

“Yeah. See you in the morning”.

He sits there for awhile, then, dozing. At some point he wakes up faint whispers and the glow of a holo-screen, accompanied by the clicking of a keyboard.

_Honestly, he didn’t expect that Koji’s inexplicable comfort powers would actually be put to use, but he’s happy to be wrong._

He tries to tune it out, mostly - whatever conversation or heart-to-heart they’re having, it’s not his business to listen in on - but when he picks up on faint sobs, he has to force himself to remain in place and not go punch Don Wei.

People are despicable, and that sweet girl deserves so much more than that robot disguised as a human for a father.

At some point the crying stops and there’s a bit more whispering, followed by a heavy silence. Then faint shuffling and the return of the keyboard clicking.

He falls asleep shortly after and wakes up to the light in the pod getting brighter, Koji leaning over him with a protein bar in hand.

“Rise and shine, it’s time to face the music”.

Stan’s expression is grim as he gets up, swallowing the bar in a few bites.

Jordan had spent many a free hour talking about getting the red carpet treatment, once they got back to Earth. Stan hadn’t had it in him to tell the kid that they were more likely to get the red _tape_ treatment instead.

As it is, that’s what they’re getting the second the ship has deposited them on solid land again, hidden by the darkness of the early morning.

* * *

They’re taken to a military base that is just a little _too_ familiar for comfort after the debriefing in the car, and once he actually catches the name of it, it becomes _WAY_ too familiar, and it’s only Koji’s reassuring presence at his side that keeps him from jumping out of the still moving vehicle and running for the hills.

Fort Maison. As far as he knows, still under the leadership of _General Guerrero_.

Fuck. _No_.

Koji’s hand wraps around his and squeezes it until it hurts, keeping him grounded, even has his mind spirals into a panic.

There’s no escape. As the military officials tell them, they’ll have to remain on Fort Maison’s ground until further notice - just until everything has settled down and their new positions as _people who know too much_ have been evaluated and settled. They’re told it won’t be much more than a week of check-ups and paperwork.

It offers him no comfort.

They’re given lodgings in some old barracks off to the side, giving them a certain amount of privacy, which is both _something_ and absolutely _nothing_ , because he’s at _Fort_ **fucking** _Maison_ , the absolute last place on Earth he’d ever want to be, stuck for a goddamned week at that.

This is why he hates the military and all the damned bureaucracy.

Much to his surprise, they’re met by Rick of all people upon entering their temporary housing. He’s still a little too close to having a panic attack to catch much of anything being said, but the happiness at reuniting with her coach and mentor is practically radiating out of Molly-Eva like morning sunshine.

_At least someone is getting something good out of this entire situation_.

He collapses onto the not-yet-made bed once they’ve all split up to get some more rest before facing a day that is bound to be hectic and stressful.

Koji reacts by grabbing his ankle and pulling him off of it, and then dumps a towel and a bar of soap on his head. He’s too tired to question where he’s gotten it from - probably some low-ranked peon sworn to secrecy - and the floor is feeling mighty comfortable right now.

Koji, however, is merciless.

“Wash up first, panic-coma later,” he nudges at Stan’s shoulder with his foot. “We’ve been three months in space, the last of them without proper access to hygienic facilities - ergo, we’re both gross. I know this place gives you flashbacks, but so help me god, we both need a shower, and I am not letting you sleep like that”.

“You’re a horrible human being, Koji Shirogane”.

“Get used to it, Abaroa. Now get moving - it’s 2am and I am too tired to be nice. You shower, I’ll handle the beds”.

True to his word, Koji did. When Stan returns, both beds are made. Koji’s with the precision and perfection that’s a hallmark of his work-ethic, and his own?

His own is a fluffy mess, the bedclothes wrinkled and looking as if they’ve just been thrown on.

_Just how he prefers it_.

_This is why Koji’s his best friend._

He’s asleep by the time his head hits the pillow, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep where he can forget that he’s back at Fort Maison once again, despite swearing to never return on the day he left it all behind.

* * *

 Morning has come slowly creeping with fog and grey skies by the time he wakes up five hours later to the sound of knocking at the door, followed by an unfamiliar, but way to chipper call of _“gentlemen, this is your 7am wake-up call, you have 30 minutes to gather for breakfast in the common room or you won’t be fed!”_ that draws him back to the uncomfortable reality of being at a military base.

_Fucking fantastic_.

Koji groans from the bed on the opposite side, a pale hand escaping from the cocoon he’s rolled himself into, fumbling around as he “looks” for his glasses. “Whoever that is is worse than my kaa-san back I was still in high school”.

Stan, who has had the pleasure of meeting Ari Shirogane on several occasions, knows that statement to be a damn lie. “Don’t be ridiculous, she’d say you’d have 30 minutes and then barge in after 20 minutes with an airhorn… and _then_ she’d feed you, because your mama knows nutrition is important”.

Koji’s head pokes out from his blankets to glare at him, momentarily stopping his search to flip him off, because while his friend is generally better at mornings than Stan himself is, he has an extremely low tolerance for his usual brand of smartassery before he’s had a chance to wake up properly.

Despite the situation, this familiar interaction makes a bark of laughter escape him.

Shortly after they meet up with the others to find the promised breakfast. Seeing Don Wei (standing in a far corner, looking out of a window) still makes his hackles rise and his blood burn, and as Eva-Molly-whoever isn’t there yet (he thinks he can faintly hear her speaking with someone a room or two over) to remind him that she’s the one with the final say in whether or not he deserves an asskicking, it’s more and more tempting.

Then there’s a whisper.

“Whatever it is you want to do… _don’t_ ”.

He glances up and sees Rick sitting slouched back over the chair next to him. He’s very pointedly looking away and focusing on spreading jam on a bagel.

“Take it from someone who tried to punch him in a drunken stupor; he’s frail-looking as all hell, yes, but between one moment and the next, he’d flipped me straight on my back. Much as he may deserve it, I doubt he can stop his own instincts from doing the same to you”.

Stan doesn’t know what to think of that, but it does serve as a deterrent for his itchy fists, and he keeps them firmly tucked into the crooks of his arms.

Koji takes the spot across from him, already looking more alive with a cup of coffee in hand. “Eat”.

“Not hungry, Koji”.

“Too bad. You still need to eat, or you’ll regret it. It’s the first _proper food_ we’ve had in _months_ ”.

Rick snickers. “I didn’t know Koji had a mother-hen in him”.

“Yeah, well _someone_ has to make sure my good old friend Stan “walk-it-off” Abaroa doesn’t run himself into the ground, and Miguel doesn’t believe in mother-henning”.

He resents that statement, but will not deign the teasing with a response. (And no, he’s not suddenly biting in an apple very angrily just because Koji told him to eat… but boy is it nice to actually eat something fresh, not those long-keeping provisions).

There’s a click of a door, then, and shortly after their little prodigy racer enters the room, followed by a dark skinned woman in a suit. Surprisingly, she’s dressed in new gear - or rather, what is probably some borrowed clothes, because the dusty green hoodie, black sweater and too long jeans are definitely not anything he’s ever seen her wear on Oban. 

Her cheeks are red, like she’s been crying, but she still smiles when she sees them (a small, frail one, but distinctively happy) and shuffles to the table with a rough-voiced “good morning”. 

They make quite the little group at that table: the top-racer with career-ending nerve damage, the seriously emotionally fucked up racing manager, the should-have-been Master of the Galaxy, the bucket of fun that is him with his past… and then Koji. All caught up in a massive government cover-up. 

_God, such a fucking mess…_

And then suddenly-

“Wait a second… Eva, that’s milk!”

He looks up at Don Wei’s outburst, finding him pointing shakily at the glass of milk Eva-Molly is holding inches from her lips. 

The look on his face is one of intense stress and almost fear, standing in sharp contrast to the relaxed confusion on her face. 

“Yeah? So?”

Don sputters not-quite-angrily. _“You’re lactose intolerant!”_

That’s… that’s new information…

For a good 5 minutes he’s witness to one of the strangest scenes since he met those two. 

Eva-Molly (and slowly he finds her real name fits much better, now that they’re in a setting that, for all intents and purposes, is much more relaxed to at least her) sits there, just calmly talking about the pain she’s been in _since pretty much after their arrival on Oban, what the hell_ , and other physical issues that they’ve completely overlooked. Just brushing it off, like it’s no big deal, there were other things to worry about. 

Don Wei, on the other hand, gets paler by the minute as she speaks, and then honest to god starts _fretting_ over his child, collapsing into a chair muttering about the dairy content in all of their rations. 

_Huh… well, whaddya know… Maybe the man has a sliver of a heart after all…_

Somewhere, deep down, he feels a spark of jealousy that he has no right to feel. So the bastard still remembered his kid’s dietary needs - good for him, _completely_ makes up for the total abandonment of a 5 year old little girl. 

But on the other hand… despite everything, this is the first proof that, regardless of terrible decisions, Don Wei actually _cares_ about her. Surely, if he didn’t give a shit, he would’ve just ignored or forgotten about such things?

It stings. Because that means that there’s still hope for them to be a family. A broken one that may never be healed completely, but still a family.

_Something that he had to abandon and then rebuild on his own to get_. 

But no. He had a nice, long talk with his therapist about this. _Many_ , nice long talks with her about it.

It’s okay to still be hurt about the past, but he’s in a better place now. A place where he can help _someone else_ get to that better place.

As he listens to the chatter at the table, he resolves to be everything he needed when he was her age.

* * *

 During a lull in the chatter, the woman takes a moment to introduce herself.

Aubrey D. Wilde.

Jordan’s older sister.

That explains why _Eva_ had looked like she’d been crying when she joined them.

“As I’ve already explained Rick over there, I’m going to be your connection with the big people from now on,” she explains, leaning up against the wall. “Honestly, there’s not much you need to do, aside from a routine check-up that we do on every person returning from an off-planet mission. The rest of your time spent here is merely to see if your bodies have any issues re-adjusting to Earth atmosphere and climate and such. Oh, and...” she pulls out a phone and taps on it for a few moments.

“Mr. Wei, I understand that there are some _special circumstances_ surrounding the situation with yourself and Miss Eva here. I’m going to have to inform you that I’ll be contacting her caseworker so that we can figure out the custody situation and other issues that may be in need of addressing. I hope you understand, _sir_ ”.

The sharp look that she sends Don Wei tells him that he’s got an ally in wanting to protect the youngest of their team.

Eva just groans and leans back in her chair. “Charlie’s gonna kill me. Toros or Kross couldn’t do it, but Charlie definitely can. My last days on Earth will be spent in a military base, what a great way to end my life”.

He doesn’t know the context, but he still can’t help the snort at what is, hopefully, an exaggerated joke. “Don’t worry, _Sunshine_ , just being in this suffocating hellhole will kill you before anything else”.

Stan knows that that might be a little bit morbid. The look he gets from Koji tells him as much. But… she _laughs_. Eva laughs, bright and happy, and something in him clicks.

_“Sunshine it is, then”._

* * *

 For what it’s worth, they don’t really have all that much to do at the base, and a lot of it is spent as free time. He supposes that beyond “debriefings” (interrogations, Stan has a distinct feeling that they were being interrogated) and medical check-ups, there’s not much else to do other than just monitor their progress.

He supposes he can get it. Rick came back with debilitating nerve-damage and they lost a man, though that was all due to accidents (and sacrifices). Who’s to say there might not be something else lurking?

Stan, for his part, spends most of the time sleeping and exercising by running around the building and borrowing the weight equipment Rick had been provided with while waiting for them to return.

Koji and Don Wei spend a lot of the time on the phone or the computer. The difference between them is that while Koji is catching up with family (“Stan, how can I _not_ gloat? My cousin Taka spent most of his life training to be an astronaut, and then I go to space just like that? Who cares that I can’t tell the whole story, this is perfect material to torment him with at next Obon!”), Don is figuring out the issue between himself, Eva, her caseworker, and that school he abandoned her at.

(He overhears her getting yelled at for a solid hour by an unknown voice on the phone. Unlike the Molly he knew on Alwas and Oban, Eva takes the scolding with a sheepish expression, and at dinner that evening she looks dazed and just answers “Charlie is a beast” when asked).

And Eva? _Sunshine?_ Other than getting yelled at, he most often finds her drawing. Intricate pencil sketches and later, when Aubrey brings her a case of watercolours and a pad of thick paper, beautiful, dreamy looking pieces that she lays out to dry on any flat surface she can get to.

All depicting Alwas or Oban in near perfect detail. Landscapes, snapshots of the pits, one of the Whizzing Arrow III… and them. The team. Jordan sprawled out over the mattress in the room she shared with him, Rick looking over the lake on Alwas, the shadow of Don Wei in the background of an image showing him and Koji working away on new repairs…

_Memories._

He didn’t realize her artistic talent, but looking back on the sick paint-jobs she did on the Arrow 2 and 3, it makes sense.

(He catches her almost _shyly_ showing Don something she’s working on one time, and the man chokes up and says something too low for him to hear, and then she flushes red and smiles bashfully. Stan never reveals that he saw such a tender moment, and he never asks what that particular sketch was of).

There’s only one mishap that happens on the day of their medical check-up. It happens when the on-site nurse calls for them in the waiting room.

“Stanford Guerrero?”

He doesn’t know what expression he’s making once those words are out of that woman’s mouth. He can feel his entire body tense up, though, and when he looks at his hands, he can see that he’s clenched them so hard in the fabric of his pants that his knuckles are white.

He looks up and tries to smile politely, but it feels like a grimace. Koji’s hand is already on his shoulder when he gets up from his seat. “Excuse me, I believe there must’ve been some kind of mistake. My name is _Stan Abaroa_ ”.

The woman looks through her papers. “Oh, sorry sir. It’s just that your paperwork matches up with-”

“Your paperwork,” he gets out through gritted teeth _“is wrong”._

To her credit, the woman doesn’t press the matter further, just writes something on her clipboard with a promise of getting it fixed ASAP and leads him into the examination room.

He doesn’t look at any of the others, just keeps walking. When he gets back to their barracks he goes to a corner out back and smokes until the world stops shaking. The others leave him alone for the rest of the afternoon, and he’s grateful for it. But he knows they have questions.

_After all, “Molly” isn’t the only one to walk around with a different name. The difference is that he has no desire to ever reclaim that old life._

Koji brings him a plate of food that evening and just sits quietly reading in the opposite bed while he curls in on himself, hiding from the world.

Stan hopes against everything that that will be the only time he’ll have old scars ripped up while in Fort Maison.

Of course he has no luck and is confronted with the knife himself on the last day before they can leave.

He’s walking back from a final meeting with the doctor, concerning the results of the bloodwork they had done. He’s just a few steps from the door and peace when a way too familiar voice accosts him.

“There you are, Junior”.

A cold rush goes down his spine and his body freezes in place, mid-step, and his ears start ringing. That coldly authoritative voice, always commanding and demanding, making all his classmates’ familie - making Koji’s family - seem like distant fairytales, works of fiction, of dreams, of smoke and mirrors.

And this his heartbeat is booming throughout his skull and he feels the blazing fire of rage rush through his body.

No. Not this time. Never again. He’s not the little kid anymore that was afraid and broken, who just wanted the approval and attention of a cold man who would never give it.

This man has no power over him. That’s what he went to therapy to learn.

So he turns around and doesn’t even bother trying to smile politely, letting his true feelings show on his face in an expression of pure disgust.

General Stanford Guerrero Sr. stands before him, decked out in full uniform, hands behind his back and looking down his nose at anything and everything. As per usual.

Christ, it’s like he never even left, except the old man dyed his hair grey.

“General Guerrero,” he spits, the words bitter and cold on his tongue. “Just the man I’ve been dying to avoid all week. To what displeasure do I owe this rare show of walking amongst us mere peasants?”

The man narrows his eyes at him. It’s only years of experience, despite his 9 years away, that tells him that the General is if not angry, then displeased. _Provoked._

_Good._ Stan realizes that he _wants_ to piss him off, to make him angry.

“I see that you still suffer from that attitude problem of yours,” the General comments, tone schooled just enough to sound lightly chastising. It would have fooled anybody else, but Stan knows his tells, all the little signs to look out for. He’s had all of childhood to figure them out.

Oh, the General never hit him. It would have been murder on the pretty little picture he was trying to paint for the public and the people who mattered. But he knew other ways of “disciplining” a child that were just as bad, and so he had to learn just how far he could go in speaking up against him.

Stan is out from under him thumb now, though, caught up in a massive government cover-up or not, and so he lets the smart-assery run wild for once in his life. “Oh, there’s no suffering here. Nah, I’m fucking _thriving_. Haven’t been better, actually, since I ran away from this shit-hole”.

The General tenses, and he can almost _hear_ his teeth grinding together. “I see that letting you live with Great Uncle Miguel hasn’t done anything for your _manners_ , either. Or _discipline_ , for that manner”.

Stan narrows his eyes back at him and straightens back up, clenching his fists. “Don’t you _ever_ fucking speak of _letting_ me do anything, you bastard. Or of my lack of discipline, manners, respect or anything of the sort,” he takes a step forwards - not enough to count as a threat (just yet), but to show assertiveness. “Lie to yourself and the official records all you want. Good for _fucking_ you, be happy in that little fantasy world of yours that you made the world believe, if that’s even an emotion you know how to feel. But don’t speak of that crap to me, and don’t come here expecting me to act along and pretend that I’m still yours to command and control, because we both know that’s _bullshit_ ”.

He can see the General’s hackles rise, his composure finally cracking as he growls: “Watch your mouth, _son_ ”.

“I’m not your fucking _son_ ,” Stan growls right back. “And you’re not my father, never were. You’re a glorified sperm donor, nothing more and nothing less. Same goes for that alcoholic wife of yours. Tell me, did she finally dump your ass in favor of Major Thompson, or are you still together to keep up that charade of the happy family you’re so fond of, while she’s fucking him behind your back? Or did she move on to someone new? I’ve had an _awfully_ lot of _uncles_ throughout the years, you know?”

General Guerrero wants to hit him. He knows he does, can see it in the way the man’s hand is twitching. He’s seen it too many times before - usually before he was locked in a closet for punishment. 

(Never hit, but just as bad, if not worse).

The bastard is welcome to it. Stan’s no longer a little kid to be easily intimidated or punished, and he’s pretty sure he can deadlift about a third of this little man’s entire body weight and probably weighs double as much as him in pure muscle. Add to the fact that Stan is a civilian and under the “protection” of the government.

If the General lays as much as _one_ finger on him, his entire career is ruined. And they both know it.

Stan is living for it.

“I suppose this behavior is what I should expect from the son of mine that would abandon everything I gave him to go slumming it with his disgrace of an uncle,” the General sneers, desperately trying to get back to the casual, dismissive tone as before, but failing miserably.

It’s bait. A trap.

He wants to rise to it, to get angry and snap to defend his uncle. But no, he’s better than this.

Much like how the General can’t touch him, Stan can’t touch the general either. Not unless it’s in self-defense. One punch and he’ll be sent straight to prison for attacking a man in uniform.

“You can fuck right off with that manipulative bullshit, _General Guerrero_ ,” he breathes deeply, somewhat succeeding at keeping himself calm. “You gave me nothing unless it was of direct benefit to you, and every “present” came with a price”. He narrows his eyes. “Uncle Miguel, on the other hand, has given me so much more than the likes of _you_ ever could. I came to him scared and alone and hurt and with _nothing_ of worth, not even myself. And you know what? Uncle _didn’t care_ that I had nothing to give in return, and he never expected it. Ever since I was small, he has given me everything that you could never be bothered to”.

A single, solitary tear falls down his cheek. Once upon a time he would have felt shame and hatred for showing even that much weakness. Tears weren’t allowed around the General and were punished with severe scoldings.

Being away from the General has taught him how much strength there is in crying and being true to one’s own emotions, however, and now he wears that tear proudly in this ugly confrontation.

“Uncle Miguel taught me that _I_ was worth something. He made me realize the worthlessness of everything you stand for. So go ahead!” He spreads his arms out, exposing himself. “Insult me, scorn me, hurt me. I fucking dare you, you sad sack of shit. But remember this: I will _never_ be part of your _oh so important_ legacy. I’m not _Stanford Guerrero Jr_., I’m not your little soldier boy to shape into a mirror image of yourself. I am _Stan Abaroa_! …and that name and glory you tried so hard to build up will _die_ with _you_ ”.

If looks could kill, Stan is pretty sure he’d be long gone by now. Six feet under and already turning to dust and mush. Why, the General’s eyes look positively _red_.

And when the General raises his hand, almost claw-like in its shape as he readies a backhand, Stan knows he’s both gone too far and had said exactly what he needs to. 

_“You ungrateful little-“_

“General Guerrero!”

The General whips around and Stan tears his eyes away from him. There, pale-faced and flanked by Aubrey and a man in a suit, stands Koji. 

(The relief that strikes through him almost has him in tears).

“Get away from him,” Koji’s voice is barely above a whisper, but Stan can hear the barely restrained fury in his voice. 

The General turns around, though he doesn’t lower his hand. Not completely, at least. “Ah, if it isn’t young Shirogane”.

“General,” Koji’s hands are shaking, refusing to back down. “Get. Away. From. Him”.

Aubrey steps forwards. “General Gurrero,” her voice is calm and her smile almost sickeningly polite. “Is there a reason why you’re harassing this most important _guest_ , despite orders from HQ that they are to be left alone?”

The General straightens. “This isn’t any of your business, _Miss Wilde_. It’s a personal matter between father and-“

“From what _I_ heard,” Aubrey drawls “this young man has no relation to you. Which means you’re _abusing_ your _power_ to try to _intimidate_ a _civilian_ , and if that is the case then you can bet your ass that it _is_ my business”.

It’s a stand-off. Aubrey vs. the General, neither willing to back down. 

The man in the suit steps forwards. 

“I suggest you take your leave, General,” he says. “I’m sure the Secretary of Interstellar Defense will have _fun_ dealing with you if you don’t”.

It’s a blatant threat, but it works, because the General growls and finally lowers his hand. “This isn’t over”.

“Oh, but it is,” Aubrey hisses. “And if I hear that you’ve so much as _breathed_ in the vague direction of the Earth Team again, I swear to all the gods in this universe that _I will end you_ ”.

The General leaves, and then Koji is at his side, hugging him tightly. 

“I was so worried!” His voice is shaking with barely controlled anger. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

Stan shakes his head. “No, I- I’m fine. You got here just in time, I think”.

The sigh of relief that falls from Koji is strong enough to lift whatever kept him standing, because his body suddenly goes boneless, and Koji has to help him to sit down on the step before he collapses. 

He’s shaking. Hard enough that his teeth chatter and he can’t move. 

_That… that really just happened, didn’t it? That wasn’t a fever dream? He stood up to General Guerrero on his own?_

Koji holds him steady and grounded until he can feel himself and the world doesn’t feel like It’s going to fall away from under his feet. A quick tap on the shoulder and Koji moves away so that they’re sitting shoulder to shoulder. 

“Are you going to be okay?”

Stan nods jerkily, words catching and clogging up his throat. “I’m- yeah I’m- just…” he covers his face with a hand. “Just… please remind me to tell Uncle Miguel I love him when we get back, alright?”

Koji smiles and nods. “That could’ve been ugly, but I’m proud of you for keeping calm for so long. As soon as I heard that you were being confronted by that bastard, I rushed to get Aubrey and-“

“Wait…” Stan has a sudden feeling that there are pieces to the puzzle he’s missing. “How did you know I was in trouble?”

Koji blinks. “You didn’t know?” Then he nods towards the barrack behind them. “Eva’s in there”.

For a moment, time stops. “What?”

“Okay, you didn’t know,” his friend’s starting to look a little apologetic. “Yeah, I tried calling you earlier, and Eva picked up your phone. She told me some strict-looking guy in a uniform was talking with you and that it didn’t look like a particularly nice conversation, so I got her to stay on the phone with me while I gathered back-up”.

….oh.

“So… she saw everything”. 

“Pretty much”.

Stan sighs. “Great,” he breathes out through his nose. “Kid didn’t need to see that”.

“No, she did not,” Koji agrees. “And yet I can’t help but be glad she did”.

“That girl needs a medal, if you ask me,” Aubrey interjects from the sidelines. “Saved me and Stevens a load of trouble with coming up with a reason to curb that bastard’s influence. Much easier to do now that we witnessed that little scene,” her grin is viciously victorious. “We will, of course, ensure that Guerrero steers clear of you from now on”.

She bows her head and whispers: “I have no intention of letting an abuser have access to their victim”.

Another burden flies off of his shoulders and his body sags again. 

When he finally goes inside, his phone is innocently sitting on the dining table by his usual seat, and Eva’s door is quickly closed from inside when he looks around the corner. 

* * *

 Night falls and he can’t sleep. His body is humming with an underlying energy and his mind is a whirlwind of old fantasies and dreams, imagined conversations - _confrontations_ \- replaying over and over again.

All both so much grander and paling in comparison to what happened that afternoon.

When the clock on his phone ticks past midnight he finally decides to just get up and get some fresh air, ultimately deciding to just go look at the sky.

The moon is out, big and bright. On any other night it would’ve been impressive, but after having seen the skies over Alwas and Oban… so much clearer without the murk of light pollution, and filled with so many other planets and moons and phenomena the Earth scientists could ever _dream_ of ever discovering...

It pales in comparison, is all.

“Stan?”

The voice is small, almost a whisper, but clear in the silence of the night. He looks behind him and has to stifle a snort.

Eva leans heavily on the frame of her window, squinty-eyed and hugging a pillow close to her chest.

“Hey there, Sunshine,” her murmurs. “What are ya’ doin’ up at this hour?”

Her smile is tired. “You and Koji seem to worry an awful lot about my sleep when you’re awake too”.

He grins back at her. “Hey, you’re a growing girl. You need your beauty rest, doncha?”

She huffs out a laugh and rubs at her eye. “I guess. Or you’re just hypocrites”.

“Hey, I’ll have you know that these eye-bags just add to my rugged good looks!”

He goes to lean on the wall next to her, and for awhile they just stand there in the relative quiet and solitude of a military base.

“I’m sorry,” she suddenly whispers. “I should’ve done something instead of just snooping and telling Koji… and for using your phone without permission”.

Stan looks at this girl, this child, for a few moments. Really considers her, because he has no idea where in the name of everything that came from. And yet he knows exactly what the kind of mindset she must’ve cornered her own mind into is like.“Sunshine, I don’t know if you can believe me at this moment, but what you did back there? Listening in on what happened and telling someone more capable to come help? That looked a hell of a lot like “doing something” to me - and I’m so glad you did”.

She blinks, and damn, that confused look hurts him - what kind of place is this so-called school she went to that fails its students, to the point where they believe they have to fight on their own? Or do they just not offer any help to the kids that need it?

“It’s okay to call for back-up and ask for help. It’s okay to acknowledge that there are some fights you just have no chance of winning, and then let someone else do the fighting for you,” he reaches up to hold her hand. “Hell, it took me this long to take that battle with the General, and you know what? It _still_ almost crushed me. And I didn’t have a choice in making that confrontation - _he_ sought out _me_. You get what I’m saying?”

He can see the gears turning in her head as she thinks things through. There’s some pain there, some contemplation, something that looks a little like denial… and then acceptance. “I think so. It’s all about being ready for something, right?”

He nods and smiles at her. “That’s part of it, Sunshine, yes. And in that moment I may have been ready… but I wasn’t quite ready to take that all on my own. But thanks to you, I didn’t have to be alone with it - not when it mattered the most”.

There’s that pain again, when he looks at her face. And suddenly he understands. Maybe he understands better than anyone else. “You’ve been alone for far too long, haven’t you? Growing up too quickly, always have to stand on your own two feet, but still so very small and fragile inside, right?”

The tear that falls from her eye shines white in the moonlight.

He reaches up with his other hand to… do something. Wipe away that tear, ruffle her hair, _something…_ but she pulls away, stepping back into her room and away.

For a second his heart breaks, and he regrets everything. Maybe he should’ve just stayed quiet, maybe he shouldn’t have done anything. He doesn’t have a comforting bone in his body, that’s Koji’s strong suit, what was he _thinking-_

There’s the sound of a door from within the darkness opening and shutting. A few beats of silence later another door opens, shuts… and then feet are pounding on the grass and suddenly there’s a teenager in his arms, clinging to him like her life depends on it as she cries.

His arms are around her in an instant, holding her close to his chest, gently pressing her head against his shoulder. “Shhhh, shhh, it’s okay Sunshine, it’s okay. You are strong and perfect and brave, and _I am so proud of you_ , but you can let go now. We’ve got you. Me, Koji, Rick, probably Aubrey, even that father of yours though he might need a lot more work… we’ve got you. You don’t have to hold it all in anymore, it’s okay to break and fall apart if that’s what you need”.

They end up sitting on the ground, unbeknownst to Eva mirroring many many times of Stan sitting like that with Koji, from when he was even younger than her and up until that afternoon.

_“You’re going to be alright, Sunshine. Everything’s going to be okay”._

* * *

 They eventually part, and Stan sees her off to bed, because she can barely walk from the exhaustion.

The next morning, Koji’s looking a little too smug for his liking.

“So…” he finally says, as he’s leaning back on his bed, waiting for Stan to finish packing. “You handled that very well, last night”.

Stan pinches the bridge of his nose. “Should’ve known you’d be awake, too”.

“You can’t blame me for still worrying after… all _that_. Besides, you were tossing and turning so much that I couldn’t sleep either”.

Stan doesn’t know what to say. Koji doesn’t really need him to, either. Finally…

“I think… I think I know what we need to do”.

Koji hums under his breath. “Yeah?”

He nods determinedly and zips up the bag. “Yeah”.

* * *

 Eva has already put her bags in the black van and is in the process of loading her rocket seat into the back of it when Stan and Koji joins them outside. Don Wei is standing near the driver’s seat, talking quietly with Aubrey, and he can faintly see a Rick-shaped outline through the open door of another, smaller car.

“Eva, Sunshine!” He calls out to her, jogging the rest of the way. “Wait”.

She stops and turns towards him. She looks tired, but there’s a lightness to her that feels new. “Stan?”

He takes a moment’s detour to quickly help her get it the rest of the way into the van and get it secured. Then he holds out a scrap of paper. “Here”.

Eva blinks, but takes it from him. “What’s this?”

“That’s mine and Koji’s address, our phone numbers, the number and address for Uncle Miguel’s garage, and the name and number of my therapist,” he points to each of them as he explains. “Doctor Duncan’s helped me figure a lot of things out, I’ll put a good word in for you if you need it, okay?”

He can’t really read her face. She looks baffled, for the most part, but there’s something he can’t quite place underneath that. “And… the others?”

“That’s for when you get a cellphone. If you need to talk or… if staying with _him_ ,” he points over his shoulder at Don Wei “becomes… well, not the thing you need. Koji and I have talked about it, and we’ve got a couch that you’re welcome to crash on anytime”.

He turns to the man before he can get a look at her reaction. The expression he’s met with is one that is carefully schooled blank. Stan, however, has no issue showing his distrust in his expressions. “As for you… I don’t really trust you,” he tells him frankly. “Least of all with _her_. What you did is disgusting and inexcusable on so many levels, and I have half a mind to punch your lights out still. But Koji’s right - that’s not what she needs right now. Right now, for whatever reason, she needs _you,_ ” he takes a step forwards and holds three fingers up. “But I’m warning you right now, _sir_. You have three strikes - don’t fuck it up”.

The blank expression cracks, and Stan finally sees a sliver of the broken man inside as he nods. Good. He’s glad they’ve got an understanding.

And like that it’s over. Goodbyes are said and they’re all loaded into their respective vehicles and driven off.

Stan leaves Fort Maison behind for the last time, and he doesn’t look back.

“Let’s go home,” Koji says as the gates close behind them.

“Home… yeah,” he whispers, grinning happily at the thought.

_Going home sounds perfect._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Name meanings: "Guerrero" means "warrior" in Spanish, whereas "Abaroa" is possibly derived from Basque and means "refuge". I got them off of one of those baby-naming sites, so I can't confirm it for sure. ^^; The point of the name-change is that Stan has changed his surname to match Miguel's, because he considers him more of a father than his actual biological one.
> 
> That said, let it be known that Stan is a very tight-lipped character to write... but put him in front of his father, and oh boy, he's suddenly got a lot to say. There was a whole lot of pent-up issues that suddenly came to light with that confrontation.
> 
> I've purposefully left a lot of the details surrounding Stan's childhood vague, because that's all in the past for him. That's not something he's willingly just going to talk or think about out of the blue. I do feel like there are a lot of hints to be found throughout this, though, that can give a pretty decent picture of what "Junior" went through, and what has driven Stan ever since.
> 
> This chapter was supposed to jump between Stan and Eva's POV, but... I got into a good flow, so this is a Stan Exclusive chapter. The next one is going to feature pretty much the same as this, but from Eva's POV instead.
> 
> Finally, introducing Aubrey Wilde! She works for the Government. You don't need to know more at this point in time, except that she, Stan, Koji, and Rick are going to form a "Protect Eva" Squad sooner or later. Eva will have all of the adopted Big Siblings she could ever want.
> 
> Lots of love and thanks to all of you guys who've commented and left kudos! I appreciate it, and I hope I'll see you guys next time!
> 
> \- NordicTwin


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